Come out Wednesday for Affordable Housing!

April 16, 2012

DC is facing huge cuts in affordable housing that impact our communities, our work, and our vision for a DC where all people can afford to live. Come out on Wednesday, and speak out for affordable housing.

6:00 PM – Housing for All Rally

WILSON BUILDING – 1350 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, NW

Come out to the Housing for All Rally. We want hundreds of people to stand up at the Wilson Building and call for a real solution to the growing housing crisis in DC. Please circulate this email among your friends and colleagues, or invite them on facebook. If you can’t do anything else to show your support for affordable housing this spring, please come out for an hour on Wednesday and rally with us.

Testify to the importance of the Housing Production Trust Fund, Local Rent Supplement Program, and/or Home Purchase Assistance Program to you, your work, and you community.

Consider using the following language in your testimony: “Housing is the foundation of our communities, and this budget does not meet my community’s housing needs. The Council must begin to address the housing crisis that District residents live with every day by making investments across the Continuum of Housing, by: Fully funding the Housing Production Trust Fund/Funding permanent solutions to homelessness/Maintaining the Home Purchase Assistance Program at its current level.”

Why come out on Wednesday?

As we all know, a stable home is the foundation for so much success in our lives and our communities. Yet in DC, tens of thousands of families live in precarious housing situations. Over 6,000 people are homeless, and over 50,000 households pay more than half their income in housing costs. This problem is growing as DC loses low cost housing in the open market. But at the same time, the DC government is cutting the programs that help provide housing stability.

The Housing Production Trust Fund faces extinction, as a second year of cuts leaves it with only enough money to pay for 170 new units in Fiscal Year 2013. The Home Purchase Assistance Program, DC’s premier home ownership tool for new buyers is facing a loss of a third of it’s total budget, and is now expected to serve 100 fewer people than it could last year. And the programs that move people out of homelessness into housing with the services they need, the Housing First program and Local Rent Supplement Program have not been given an additional dime as the crisis in family homelessness grows.

The District is seeing growing numbers of homeless families (more than 400 families are now housed in costly hotels and at DC General) and families overwhelmed by the cost of housing. This is a direct result of the years of underinvestment in the housing programs that could have kept individuals and families in their homes, and provided long term solutions to ongoing housing needs. It’s time to turn the tide. Join us on Wednesday.

Housing for All Blog is a project of the Housing For All Campaign. We believe all District residents deserve decent, quality housing at a price they can afford, and call on District officials to create a full Continuum of Housing that will meet that need.